Blog

It’s here. The scratchiness in the throat. The sweating.
There are a million multiplying bio-agents in my head and they’re
all manufacturing phlegm.

I get up in the middle of the night to gargle antiseptic
mouthwash and discover that this stuff is much stronger
than back home. I think it actually dissolves my teeth a little.
But I’m prepared to take a little friendly fire. This throat
needs to be liberated.

The key to getting out of a hotel room on time is to corral all
your gear into one small area and not let it escape. It tries, of course.
When you’re not looking, your shoes sneak under the desk and your
wallet climbs onto the bedside table. Then when you’re chasing
them down, your underpants run giggling into the bathroom. You
have to be vigilant.

My dilemma this morning is that I have no dollar bills with
which to tip the guy who will inevitably try to lift my bag into
the back of the taxi. I’m not sure which is weedier: not saying
anything or launching into a big sad story about how I don’t
have anything smaller than a twenty because I lost my credit
card temporarily and blah blah blah. But luckily I manage to
get out to the curb on my own, and then the cab driver lunges
for my bag before the doorman can reach it. That’s good: I
can tip him with my credit card. Crisis averted.

I check-in but am not assigned a seat, instead being told to
see someone at the gate. In retrospect, I should have realized right away
that this meant a problem. But I’m still a little naive about flying
and assume that if you book a ticket, they’ll let you on the
plane. This silly notion is beaten out of me at the gate, where
a woman explains that the plane can only take 49 passengers
instead of the booked 50 because of weight issues. “And you’re
number 50,” she says. This strikes me as a little unfair.
I mean, I know I’m not a teenager any more, but there have to be
plenty of passengers with more significant weight issues
than me. Surely in this situation it should be surivival
of the thinnest?

The solution, apparently, is to get a passenger to voluntarily
give up their seat.
So I stand by the desk while she makes
a series of attractive offers to anyone willing to do so.
Nobody bites. Finally, when everybody’s on board but me, she shrugs and just prints me off a
boarding pass. I’m reminded of the movie French Kiss, where
Kevin Kline says:
“The pilot
says there is a crack in the engine, but not to worry, he
take off anyway.”

“Head through to Door E,” she says. “E,” I say, nodding.
“No, E,” she says. This is the sort of discussion that could
go on a while, so rather than educate her about Australian
accents, I just nod. Door E is down a stairwell eerily
reminiscent of my old high school, complete with chewing gum
stuck to the rail. Then I am told to wander out on the
tarmac for my plane. “It’s the gray one,” an assistant
says helpfully.

I walk outside and there are about 18 gray airplanes in a row
preparing to take off. I choose the closest one and climb
aboard. It feels like catching a bus. “Is this Milwaukee?
Are we going to Milwaukee?”

The answer is maybe, because while we’re in the air, a
thick fog rolls over Wisconsin.
The pilot tells us we might end up in
Chicago. I’ve never been diverted before, so this seems
quite interesting, albeit something of a problem in that
a bunch of people are expecting me to be at a Milwaukee
bookstore in a few hours’ time. But that wouldn’t be my
problem, exactly. One of the wonderful things about being
on book tour is that other people are responsible for
figuring out where you are supposed to go and how to get you
there. It’s kind of like they assume you are a complete
moron, unable to do anything for yourself, and once you
learn to go with that, it’s very pleasant.

Our pilot, who has a deep Southern accent and clearly
isn’t the sort of guy to let little things like excess
weight regulations stop him from flying his plane his way,
decides to take a stab at a Milwaukee touchdown even though
he can’t see anything.
The
ground materializes out of fog about eight seconds before we
make contact, but it’s a pretty smooth landing. He talks the
talk, our guy, and he backs it up.

Milwaukee is cold. Not as cold as the last time I was here,
in January 2004, when everything was under a two-foot blanket
of snow. That was awesome. But still cold; colder than it
looked when I did a quick search on US temperatures before
I left home and tried to convert fahrenheit to celsius in
my head. Since I’m kind of sick, I don’t think I’ll be
doing any sightseeing on foot today.

I have a media escort here, Mike, whose job it is
to assume I’m a complete moron for the day. Mike is a
great guy, very easy to talk to, and he plays tour guide
as we drive around and I drop into book stores to sign
stock. “The only bad thing about Milwaukee is the crime,”
Mike says. “Crime is worse than it should be. But where
you’re staying, downtown, that’s safe. Well… relatively
safe.”

I find the bookstores a little depressing, especially the
big Barnes & Noble store. There are so
many new books; endless shelves of them. And every hardback
has a carefully crafted eye-catching cover and amazing
quotes from allegedly rave reviews and is written
by a good-looking celebrity. I wonder how it’s possible
for a small, good book to fight its way out of this
circus. I’m glad I don’t have to see this very often:
the pointy, business end of publishing. I love writing
books; I don’t want to have to think too much about
selling them.

My reading is at Harry W. Schwartz in Bay View. It’s a
new store, and I think the unfamiliar location is probably why people keep
trickling in at a steady rate throughout the reading. Either
that or because I initially posted the wrong address on
this web site. I’ve been changing the parts of Company
I read from stop to stop, but think I’ve got a good selection
now. Then we have a particularly good Q&A session, with
lots of great questions. Afterward, I sign books,
including about a dozen hardbacks for a guy who has laminated the covers.
He’s a collector, so I ask him how that works:
how does he decide how long to hold on to an author’s books,
and when it’s time to cash in? I’m particularly interested
in his opinion about when I’m going to peak, or if I already have.
But he says he’s the kind of
collector who can’t bear to sell his books. “I have 16,000
hardbacks,” he says. “My wife doesn’t especially like that.”

Back at my hotel, I have a fax from Martin at Vintage saying
I have a TV interview in the morning on FOX 6. Wow. I’ve only
ever done one TV interview before, a show called “Jersey’s Talking”
with Lee Leonard on my first ever book tour in 1999, and I’m
sure I was completely terrible. I will try to do better tomorrow.

Finally I call home and hear that earlier today
Finlay crossed her arms for the first time. Crossed her arms!
That sounds hilarious. I need a picture of that.

Barry Mitchell (#1001)

I posted in the last update... but I'll post again here... because I'm just like that, I guess.

It was great to see you in Milwaukee last night. I enjoyed the reading and your Q and A. Really enjoyed the new stuff - I'm looking forward to the book! Thanks for taking the time to talk with everyone while you signed, and thanks for the great personalization of my copies.

I apologize again for posting before that I'd buy three hardbacks, not realizing it would be nearly impossible to find anymore hardbacks since the publisher is pushing the paperback versions. But it seemed like you had a pretty good crowd there, and Schwartz moved quite a few copies. I'll definitely be buying The Exceptionals in hardcover as soon as it comes out.

Adam (#24)

At Indiana University, Bloomington Indiana(where I live), the dorms are as exciting as ever. It seems with Spring and the soon to be summer, the drama threat level on my Co-ed floor is higher than level...I would say somewhere around orange threat, well maybe a little more towards a yellow...I'll discuss the reasons later in NON TRAVEL DIARY:#3 THE SEARCH FOR FILLER.

Today was partly cloudy, High 78 degrees Fahrenheit. I had a test in my Intro to Business class over Marketing and Production. It wasn't too exciting. I've basically done nothing else productive...except write this blog.

-adam speicher

Elisha (#1577)

Location: OntarioQuote: "I am on the next page, the next book."Posted: 2897 days ago

i love how excited you get about your daughter.it makes me very happy.

David (#1456)

Yes, to have even read the first chapter is amazing - it was FOX after all...

Matt (#61)

Location: ChicagoPosted: 2896 days ago

Chicago is preparing as we speak; the elephants were tough to get for the welcoming parade, but we managed. Can't wait.

towr (#1914)

Location: NetherlandsPosted: 2896 days ago

I loved that line about aliens and human resources in the interview :P

Jake (#1479)

Location: In front of the computerQuote: "Here's two herring and a squirrel: Amuse us!"Posted: 2896 days ago

Haha, wow. I just watched the Milwaukee interview. Your voice is a lot different than I expected. A lot deeper.Also, you look different when you're really moving, than just a picture.No offense, but based on that, I would have taken you for British, what with the sweater, and the accent and everything.But then, maybe I'm just loosing my grip on different accents, assuming I ever had one.

(But then, the best example of an Aussie accent I ever had was from Steve Irwin, and it seemed like he was always a little over-the-top whenever he spoke to the camera, like he was *really* trying to get across the point that he was Australian.)

Yubi Shines (#1664)

Location: CanadaQuote: "HOPE RIDES ALONE!"Posted: 2895 days ago

Well, Max, then again, there's no way any spoilers could have been blurted out.